300 Minutes of Heck: Augusta 70.3 Preview and Ramblings

    This Sunday is the  Augusta Ironman 70.3.  It's been a while, and I am curious how I will fare. 

    See, after the birth of my daughter and immediate divorce, I jettisoned long distance triathlon, to focus on things other than my hobby.  This was no noble sacrifice, but rather a necessity of divorced parenthood, career, and time management.  Moreover, let's not kid ourselves, the longer the race, the weaker I get.  I'm hell for an hour, no question about it, which is how I continue to win sprint triathlons outright in my mid-40's.

Me for an hour.

    Alas, the 60 minutes of hell I unleash dissipates quick-like.  I remain hot up to the Olympic Distance (2 plus hours), but beyond that, I'm embers.   At the half iron distance, the brimstone fizzles and I bring you, at best, 300 minutes of heck.  I am more than OK with this:  better to be strong at one distance than mediocre at all.  The exemplar of  endurance extremes, I've won 15 tris outright just since I became a dad 10 years ago, all but two of them sprints.  Yet if you'd seen me walking sideways, crab-like in my last ironman, you'd agree I am not mediocre at that distance either.

    Whatever your distance, whichever leg is your best, triathlon is a hobby.  Call it a "lifestyle," get the M-Dot tattoo; change jobs and cities twice to accommodate your training and race desires;  but  unless you feed your your kids from your winnings, or are bleeding through the nose trying to get your pro card and some sponsors, then triathlon is your hobby.  Not your job.

    I get it that you are addicted to the training, the hours, the sweat, the feeling of accomplishment that approaches hubris, and that delicious soreness after a brutal track session. This sport attracts addictive personalities.  I get it that you surround yourself exclusively with the similarly fervent, and that your social life and your sport are so intertwined, wisteria-like, you can't distinguish between them.

    Well, trainspotters are obsessive too, they are just tougher to spot in a crowd, without the Livestrong bands and bike tans.  Your avocation is what you choose to pass the time before you die, and impose meaning on your life beyond work and sitcoms.   I applaud your choice in hobbies -- I gravitated to this sport in law school back in the last century, and haven't left the fold --  but there are birders who will gut you over a tufted titmouse sighting.  And rival Trekkie gangs beef over Kirk vs. Picard with Biggie vs. Tupac combustibility.

 

My Vote.  Fellow Jew.  And debauched and awesome in his dotage.  Note that Spock, too was a member of the tribe.

    And I wonder if, on the whole, birders, and comic-con types and Trekkies and Jehovah's Witnesses are better adjusted than triathletes, of if we could trade obsessions  and find interchangeable underlying impulses.

    I digress.


    Now then, this 70.3 race on Sunday.   This will be my first venture back at an M-Dot incorporated event since they rebranded the half-ironman distance as "70.3."  Remember how we used to call them half-irons?  Perhaps the "half" seemed reductive, hence the name change.  "Half " resonates with lite beer and half-off sales and the implication that you couldn't hack something fully or completely, since it was just half the full hot order.

    Then again, with the proliferation of decimal point car window stickers -- 13.1!  26.2!  70.3!  140.6! -- perhaps the 70.3 title makes brand sense.  Maybe this is M-Dot corporation following the decimal point sticker trend, not setting it.  Branding aside,  I am keenly interested to see how my short course skills suit this distance after a 7 year hiatus, and whether I am as weak at long stuff as I remember it.   More mileage in the final month would have helped going in, but it's been a strong summer on the bike, I am not over trained and I believe plenty fit enough.

    I look forward to finding out:  300 minutes of heck unleashed on a race, and that same number of minutes spent imposing meaning through sweat on another Sunday morning in my life, until I run out of them.